NPD: US games market falls

Having delayed the announcement of last month’s US video game sales, NPD has today published the figures for both April and May in the North American video games market – and both show year-on-year declines.

May saw a 10 per cent sales decrease compared to 2009, with total sales of $823.5. April suffering a five per cent drop.

Microsoft emerged as the largest single revenue contributor amongst the platform holders, though Sony will be pleased that it showed both the highest year-on-year sales growth, and that PS3 enjoyed its ninth and tenth straight months of year-on-year growth, even if sales did slip between April and May.

Unsurprisingly the DS once again emerged as the best selling hardware, though it did see sales numbers drop by over 57k between April and May. Overall hardware sales were down 20 per cent from 2009 at $241.5m.

For the year-to-date DS sales stand at 2,560,700 units and Wii sales at 2,033,200. Xbox 360 leads the PS3 with unit sales of 1,473,200 compared to 1,286,200. The PSP has sold 478,300 machines so far in 2010.

In the software market, overall sales were actually up four per cent annually, thanks to a strong showing from a number of new releases. In much the same way as it dominated the UK’s May market, Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption emerged as the best selling title of the period shifting 1.5m units. It has already passed total lifetime sales of predecessor Red Dead Revolver.

Titles that missed the May top ten include the new Split/Second, Blur, ModNation Racers and Lost Planet 2.

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